I love Lana Del Rey! It's weird because I read something that said, "Oh, Willis Earl Beal and Lana Del Rey are the antithesis of each other." When in fact, she was what I wanted to sound like.

People tend to believe that I want to make soul music, which is not entirely untrue but, really, I want to be like the black Tom Waits - I don't want to make one kind of sound.

I haven't figured out how to do anything yet besides recording music - I don't even entirely know how to do that. My favorite phrase is "It takes a lot of imagination to have no talent." So it's a struggle because I struggle between thinking about whether or not I'm actually a musician, am I actually an artist. Does it matter what I'm doing? Should I just go and jump off a bridge? Thinking about the social hierarchy and the fact that I'm American, and how I don't identify with being American, nor do I identify with any nationality or my race.

The person on the shrine is myself. I listen to my own music constantly. I made a whole other record already. I look at myself on the internet constantly, so much so that I actually physically hate my face. It's like I've become apart from myself. I can't even live up to myself.

The only way for me to give a good performance is to make myself extremely uncomfortable - and it just so happens that being on stage makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Everything that I do is limitation and complete intuition. I'm a human being. I'm not a musician. I'm not an entertainer. I don't know anything!

I don't know what people want. I have delusions of grandeur, but I'm not sitting here talking to you and thinking that I'm the goddamn President. I want to know everything, but I just can't.